I am so glad to be over the cold that I dealt with for almost two weeks. As we begin a new year, I wish you the best.
My first meal of 2021: Stouffers Macaroni And Cheese
My first beverage of 2021: Mexican Coca-Cola in a glass bottle
First record listened to: "Living In America" by James Brown
And that's how my first 35 minutes have gone.
I've been dealing with a bad cold all week and haven't done much of anything, on-line or in real life. I've slept a lot, and drank a lot of water. Between being sick, and the fact that we here in Binghamton got hit by a record snowstorm, taking things easy has been the best thing I can do for myself.
The nine justices of the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the lawsuit that the Texas State Attorney General filed.
The reaction to this has been swift, and quite honestly, not entirely expected by yours truly. I thought that conservatives, having failed at their last, desperate effort, might finally give in.
I was so very wrong about that.
Yesterday, Texas Republican Chairman Allen West released the following statement:
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
And there, dear reader, you have it. The first, but not, I fear, the last call for secession by Republican controlled states.
It has been thirty-seven days since Joe Biden was elected as the next President of the United States of America. I was watching MSNBC when the NBC election desk called the election for Biden. I was in a hotel room, enjoying a well deserved micro-vacation. I said these words out loud, "Please let it be real".
Though I was very tired, I stayed up to watch the speeches that Biden and Kamala Harris gave that night. I was on cloud nine, as the expression goes, at seeing how many people came out to attend in person and how jubilant they were.
I was jubilant that night, but I'm not anymore.
Because, over the last thirty-seven days, Donald Trump has refused to concede defeat. He has, rather, pulled every single dirty political stunt and trick that he and his minions can think of. As they have suffered defeat after defeat in the courts (what is it now, forty of them?), they have grown increasingly desperate.
They have cast their proverbial net ever wider, embracing nutcases and fringe lunatics who, in a saner and more decent society, would be limited in their scope of influence to perhaps a few thousand people. Their rantings and ravings would be restricted, for the most part, to newsletters and mailing lists.
And now, in what can only be called an attempted coup, the Republicans have gone nuclear on us.
The Texas State Attorney General, Ken Paxton, has filed a lawsuit seeking to have the United States Supreme Court overturn the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
This effort, if successful, would allow the state legislatures in those four states to appoint a slate of electors for Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
Seventeen state Attorneys General have filed an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit. They are from these states:
Missouri
Arkansas
South Dakota
Florida
Indiana
Kansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Montana
Nebraska
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Utah
West Virginia
Tennessee
Alabama
Also, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has filed formally a separate brief "respecting" the Texas suit.
So, there you have it, dear reader. Government officials in eighteen states that have gone on the record as supporting an attempted coup here in our country.
I'd love to be able to say that I feel 100% confident that this lawsuit will fail. But, with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all seated on the Supreme Court bench, anything is possible.
We are dangerously close to being totally f***ed.
I'm back.
I have gone back and forth more times than I care to think about as regards the future of this blog. My readership is nowhere near what it once was, but those of you still with me deserve to at least know what's going on.
I've been going through a rough patch in life (but then again, who hasn't?) and the end is nowhere in sight. If you're even half way decently informed, then you probably know just as well as I do how bad the Covid-19 situation has become here in the United States of America.
If you haven't suffered at all, then all I can say is "wow". Because everyone I know has suffered. My mother, who loves to socialize at her local senior center, hasn't gone there in a long time. My brother, who is at high risk, as am I and as is our mother, are on edge.
I go out only when I absolutely have to. Most days, I either don't go anywhere at all, or I go just one block up to the convenience store. I've walked two blocks to the heart of downtown Binghamton once in the last fourteen days, and I've gone to Wal-Mart for groceries just three times in the last six weeks.
I've been through this kind of isolation more than once before in my life, so I'm better equipped to handle it than most of us are. But that doesn't make it easy, it just makes it tolerable.
This is the first post of at least two posts I'll be putting up today. The next one is in draft status, and I'll be finishing it in a little while.
